Development and Implementation of Interferometric SAR Processor, GSTP ph-1

In this project an interferometric SAR processing system is studied (phase 1) and will be implemented and delivered (phase 2) to the European Space Agency (ESA).
Processing large amounts of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is no longer exceedingly difficult.
Processing of individual strips of satellite SAR data, such as ERS-1/2, is routine many places. This also applies to the initial stages of the interferometric processing, including coarse baseline estimation, image-to-image registration and interpolation, and the formation of power differences and ratio images, interferograms, and correlation images. The steps following are, however, far from trivial or solved, even if significant improvements have been made through the last few years of work with SAR interferometry. These critical steps include phase unwrapping, the determination of the absolute phase, precise baseline determination, phase and correlation calibration, geophysical perturbations (most notably the atmosphere and temporal decorrelation), as well as the follow on processing, e.g. mosaicking.
Despite the fact that many issues are still not completely resolved, InSAR data, in particular ERS-1/2 tandem mode data, are today being used in numerous geophysical studies, primarily scientific but also at times commercial, and the potential of interferometric SAR is today recognised widely. One example of a complex application of InSAR's potential is the simultaneous determination of elevations and 3-dimensional flow vectors as recently demonstrated at the Danish Center for Remote Sensing at EMI, [Mohr et al., 1998].